coventrate
During the Second World War (especially during the Battle of Britain ) in the context of lightning wars, the destruction of cities by air raids with the aim of damaging important facilities of the enemy was described as coventrate or coventrize by the German armed forces leadership and in the German media to break the resistance of the population.
The term was probably coined by Joseph Goebbels after the bombing of the English city of Coventry on November 14, 1940 , and has its place in a number of Nazi euphemisms .
Cities to which this term was also applied (partly in retrospect) include Rotterdam , London (see The Blitz ) and Warsaw (see Warsaw Uprising and Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto ).
See also
- Hamburgization
- Baedeker Blitz
- Magdeburg Wedding - the destruction of Magdeburg during the Thirty Years' War went down in history as "Magdeburgize".
literature
- Victor Klemperer : LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii. Philologist's notebook . 15th edition, Reclam, Leipzig 1996, ISBN 3-379-00125-2 ; Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-7632-5492-7 (1st edition, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1947).